This place matters. — Mike The PoeT Sonksen was a guest speaker in my Advocacy Planning course at Cal Poly Pomona. He led a writing exercise on the power of place. I wrote this impromptu. When I was little, I spent most of my days at my Nana’s house on Keenan Avenue in East…

Same hustle. New prop. — A hustler approached me on Spring Street as I walked up to Clayton’s. “Eyy man,” I heard over my right shoulder. “Eyyyy . . .”. I had work to do, and I usually don’t respond to “Hey.” But the homie caught up to me. “Eyy man!” …

I’m going to publish my old writings. — I saved nearly all of my student writings. They span elementary to graduate school days. Short stories, political analysis, critiques of the built environment — all of it sitting at mom’s house in storage. This is years of stress, frustration, and growth embodied in print. In rereading my old work…

This is the ethical path forward. — Supervisor Janice Hahn has proposed to make the LA County Library system fine-free. The Board motion follows similar efforts by libraries nationwide. From the West Coast to the East Coast, from the Midwest to the South, libraries are abandoning overdue fines. This is the right thing to do. Imposing economic…

And Bringing Together My Passions in Librarianship and Urban Planning. — In March 2021, I joined TutorMe as a virtual librarian. TutorMe is one of several online tutoring platforms launched in the Collaborative Economy era. It allows practitioners in dozens of fields to provide tutoring services to students around the world. …

“Earthquake: The Big One” bested Freddy Krueger for #1. — My mom, the amateur archivist, saved every artifact from my childhood. I visited her yesterday. She’d been cleaning out some drawers and found an essay I wrote titled, “What I Did Over Spring Break.” I wrote it in 6th grade, 1988. This was a joyous spring break. I celebrated a…

Part 1 in a series on the author’s return to guest speaking at East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy after the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Esteban E. Torres High School in East Los Angeles has the distinction of being one of three public high schools in the U.S. with an urban planning…

Embedded Planning is a new form of street-level praxis. As I explain in my opening salvo, “We Cannot Plan From Our Desks,” Embedded Planning situates the work of planners on the ground. Embedded planners take part in a community’s daily life, resulting in stronger relationships with stakeholders, increased public participation…